[tweetmeme]If you are selling technology products to small businesses, forget about social media. Instead, focus your efforts on increasing your visibility in the search engines. When making decisions to purchase technology products, small business buyers go to the search engines to find the products that they are looking to buy.
This is according to a new survey on small business technology purchasing decisions conducted by Ivy Worldwide http://www.ivyworldwide.com with about 1,000 respondents.
Here are the other findings from the study and the factors you need to consider when selling technology to small businesses:
- When considering buying a technology product, small business owners largely start with search (49%). Hence, it is important that your business shows up in search for the keywords that they are likely to use.
- SMBs lean heavily on word-of-mouth referral such as third-party reviews (35%) or blogs and forums (34%)
- SMBs act like value-conscious consumers when buying technology: Price (33%) and third-party referral (25%) strongly influence decisions; in addition, a significant quantity (18%) focus on potential dual-utility for both business and personal use
- Traditional media, Twitter and Facebook not a factor in purchases: SMBs use traditional media (9%) and Twitter/Facebook (5%) minimally when making buying decisions
- 70% tend to purchase online
- Large companies miss the mark when marketing to SMBs: 75% feel they’re not effectively marketed to by the companies that target them
- Most SMB purchasers do not have a specific technology brand in mind when seeking information
The SMB Technology Purchasing Survey was conducted among 1,000 respondents. About 54% of those who responded to survey work from home or virtually, and 95% have annual operating revenues of $2 million or less.
Download the full study Ivy Worldwide: Six secrets to selling to SMB